Data center a dirty neighbor

Construction is dirty work, and perhaps no one knows that better than Mary Deheck, a Town of Port Washington resident who lives on Highway LL near the Vantage Data Centers Lighthouse Campus.

For the last several weeks, ever since the winter winds kicked up, Deheck said, dirt from the construction project has blown not just onto her property but into her house, coating everything inside and out in brown silt.

“I’ve lived here all my life and I’ve never seen anything like this,” she said. “This morning there was a dump truck coming down LL and there was a cloud all around it.”

When the wind first kicked up a couple weeks ago, she said, construction crews were working atop a large mountain of soil.

“The berm is higher than the interstate, so when it blows it just keeps going,” she said. “The next day, all the snow was brown. The deck was covered in one-eighth of an inch of dirt. My driveway is blacktop, but now it’s brown.”

She has good windows but the dirt somehow gets inside, Deheck said, even though she has placed towels along the bottoms of the windows and the doors.

“No matter where you walk, it’s covered in dirt,” she said. “It just gets everywhere.”

She tries to get out every day and wipe the windows, she said, “just so it doesn’t look like it’s foggy out.”

Her son parked his car in her driveway, and the black vehicle now looks brown, Deheck said.

“He blew it off with a leaf blower on Sunday, but it’s all covered again,” she said.

But it’s more than just aesthetics she’s worried about. Deheck said she’s concerned about the impact of the dirt on her health and the health of her animals — she has chickens and a couple of goats as well as a dog.

“The dog goes outside and eats the snow, then he comes in and coughs,” she said. “I go to bed with a headache. I wake up with a headache.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I can’t spend all my time vacuuming and cleaning floors and dusting.”

Town Chairman Mike Didier on Monday said that Pitbull Towing, which is across the street from Deheck’s house, contacted him to complain about the dust.

He was a little skeptical at first, Didier said, but after seeing photos of the mess he was shocked.

“It was bad,” he said. “It was comically bad.”

The company contacted Vantage, which sent out a crew to clean it up, Didier said.

But, he said, a day later it was dirty again.

Katie Praedel, a spokesman for the Department of Natural Resources, said the agency was recently contacted by the local conservation warden about the dust. The DNR’s stormwater engineer immediately contacted Vantage’s permit manager and requested that a winter dust control plan be implemented, Praedel said.

“This is standard practice when the DNR receives complaints of a construction site with dust or erosion control challenges,” she said.

“Vantage worked with its construction crews and developed a winter dust control plan, which is consistent with DNR’s dust control technical standard.”

Dust control, she noted, falls under the DNR’s authority through the stormwater permit.

At Monday’s Town Board meeting, a number of residents also asked the town to do what it can to reduce speed limits on roads used by Vantage construction crews.

One woman asked specifically if the town could work with Ozaukee County to reduce the speed on Highway KW north of Lake Drive.

“A lot of people are frustrated with the amount of traffic, and they’re being less cautious,” she said.

Dave Janus asked the board to check on the condition of town roads, saying the construction traffic is seriously damaging them.

Didier said repairs will be paid for by Vantage, noting, “Anyone who damages a road is responsible to repair it. In this case, it’s pretty easy to determine who that is.”